Pollaganda: Media polls as instruments of propaganda

No-Pasaran picked up Mark M. Alexander's article at Townhall on the emergence and significance of MSM "propaganda" (dubbed Poll-aganda by Alexander) on shaping public opinion and how it is being used agressively to drive the liberal agenda, propagating the increasingly obvious media bias that exists in North America right now. While he relates to media issues in the US, certainly his observations are equally valid here. CTV, CBC, and most of the major Canadian news agencies regularly commission "polls", then drive media agenda with the results. Using Alexander's context, one doesn't have to look hard to find Canadian examples of where the media polls say one thing, and the headline rotates in the other direction.

Alexander writes:

"There are two reasons that the performance ratings for the President and Congress are at record lows -- even among their Republican constituents.

The first is obvious. Republicans, who control both the White House and Congress, have managed not to live up to even the lowest expectations for politicians, particularly on domestic issues. Though some Republicans are still conservative, most have fallen into the "distinction without a difference" category: They have morphed into Republicrats.

[...]

Their [Bush and Congress] abysmal performance notwithstanding, there is a second more subtle and insidious reason that Republicans' standing among their own constituents, and the nation at large, is at a low point: Polloganda. Better known as disinformation or dezinformatsia, we're referring to any campaign of political propaganda masquerading as "objective journalism" designed to advance a liberal bias.

For example, after weeks of relentlessly "reporting" bad news for Republicans, CBS news anchor Bob Schieffer led Tuesday night with "Bad news for the Republicans" and went on to proclaim that a new CBS News/New York Times poll foretells "a dramatic shift in the political landscape."

Schieffer continued, "Are we about to see a dramatic shift in the political landscape? If the findings of a new CBS News/New York Times poll are accurate, the answer may well be yes. President Bush's ratings have hit another all-time low at only 31 percent and the Republican-controlled Congress gets even lower marks, an approval rating of only 23 percent. That's just a little better than 1994, when dissatisfaction was running so high that Republicans wrested control of both houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years from Democrats."

[...]

Of course, months of Times headlines and CBS reports prior to this poll had "few if any bright notes for Mr. Bush or Congress."

To be fair, the last paragraph of this 1,480 word Bush-bashing diatribe includes this tidbit: "Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, who was Mr. Bush's opponent in 2004, had a lower approval rating than Mr. Bush: 26 percent, down from 40 percent in a poll conducted right after the election. And just 28 percent said they had a favorable view of Al Gore, one of Mr. Bush's more vocal critics." In other words, with all the favorable mainstream media coverage Kerry and Gore get, Bush still comes out on top. Perhaps The Times should have headlined this article, "Bush more popular than Kerry or Gore."

[...]

These polls become self-fulfilling when the MSM incessantly pushes a particular perspective, polls the indoctrinated masses in search of that perspective and then reports the results as "news."

Americans who agree to answer public-opinion polls about political performance are not political analysts, national-security specialists, economists or policy experts. They are folks who hold common labor and professional jobs in order to support their families and make ends meet. They are the backbone of our nation. Unfortunately, a large measure of their perspective on politics, national security, the economy and public policy is not reality based, but shaped by the MSM.

What The Times and CBS, along with other MSM outlets, are really doing is polling on the media's effectiveness at indoctrinating readers and TV viewers with opinion-shaping propaganda -- or in The Patriot's parlance, "pollaganda."

[...]

Pollaganda is outcome-based opinion samples (polling instruments designed to generate a preferential outcome) based on prior-opinion indoctrination or cultivation by the media, the results of which are then used to manipulate public opinion further by advancing the perception that a particular opinion on an issue has majority support, and then presenting this "data" as if it were "news."

We say "outcome-based" because most polls reflect intentional propagation of a particular bias by Leftmedia television and print outlets to manipulate public opinion. They accomplish this by first saturating viewers with "reporting" that reflects a particular bias. After a thorough indoctrination, the media outlets then conduct "opinion polls" which, of course, reflect that indoctrination. Then they use the poll results to further proselytize by treating the results as "news." This in turn induces "bandwagon psychology" -- the human tendency of those who do not have a strong ideological foundation to aspire to the side perceived to be in the majority -- and thus further drives public opinion toward the original media bias, ad infinitum.

Pollaganda, then, is self-perpetuating.

Polls are so often manipulated for this purpose that The Patriot NEVER reports polling (conservative or liberal) as legitimate news because virtually all polling is nothing more than a well-crafted lie used to propagate a particular opinion or bias. This is not to say that polls don't provide an accurate account of public sentiment. It is simply to say that such sentiment is largely a reflection of MSM indoctrination -- and thus comports with a liberal viewpoint.

In the final analysis, conservatives are forced to run a considerable and unrelenting MSM opinion gauntlet. Still, if President Bush and Republican leaders would merely listen to their conservative constituents and act accordingly, they would be in a stronger position to defend themselves against MSM pollaganda -- and they would enjoy a more favorable standing with the American people."

It can be argued that Harper and the Conservatives have had, and continue to have to run the same gauntlet. The largely left tilted Canadian MSM have had a snootful of arrogance relentlessly looking for political spin that somehow demonstrates that, if they could only get close enough to look, the Conservatives obviously must be as slovenly as the MSM's kissing cousins, the departed Liberals.

You know the Conservative closet is full of skeletons, after all, the MSM have been telling you that since way before the last election (the one before the last election). The fact that Harper won't let the wogs close enough is proof that he must be up to no good.

PM Harper needs to remind himself to do what Dubya has not been good at: staying close to the people who elected him. As Harper struggles to reach out to those who are convinced he's the antichrist, he has to remember not to stray out of sight of his constituents.

Pick up the article and fill in the blanks...